DSLRUsers.com

Have not been doing much in taking photo's lately (work been the pits lately) but been going through photo library and found this one I took in 2008 with the 12 to 24 sigma

I like that, the slab of orange is a bit strange but it still works for me.

Yes, I think it works well providing a contrast
of colours that end up in a grey sky.

I think the orange is too dominant and makes your eye stop there too much. I think it would work better with just a sliver of orange or else a conversion to mono.

I went and took another shot today but standing further back so I could replace the foreground.

I like the image. It sort of reminds me of that photo in media last year worth ??million dollars?

Definite improvement. I suspect a mono conversion would be even better since the key elements of the image are close to mono anyway.

To dark to light?

I think that's good and I definitely prefer it to the colour version.

I also think the moody black and white works much better. Like Murray I find the orange foreground dominates the colour version.

Personally, I find this conversion to B&W too radical.
The sky is too dark on my screen, but maybe in yours
it looks OK.

Possibly. I tend to think it's OK. The real test in my opinion is as a print.